The president said he is saddened that some families will spend the holidays in evacuation centers because their homes were destroyed.

Rescue workers have been struggling to reach many of the worst affected areas in Compostela Valley and the neighboring Davao Oriental region. Landslides have blocked roads and knocked out power and communications.

Bopha raked across Mindanao and several other Philippine islands before moving off into the South China Sea.

It has caused at least 418 deaths in the country, left about a quarter of a million homeless and affected more than 5 million people overall, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the Philippines' emergency management agency, reported Friday morning. Some 383 people are missing and 445 are injured, the agency said.

The typhoon arrived just ahead of a sinister anniversary on Mindanao. A year ago, Tropical Storm Washi drenched northern areas of the island with heavy rain, setting off flash floods and landslides in the middle of the night that destroyed entire villages.

Washi, dubbed "Sendong" in the Philippines, killed more than 1,200 people and left painful memories in the hardest hit areas, Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City.

The approach this week of Bopha, a far more powerful storm than Washi, had residents fearing fresh devastation. Local authorities took preemptive action, relocating thousands of people to evacuation centers and setting up emergency supplies.

But in the end, northern Mindanao was spared the worst of Bopha's fury. It was the less prepared communities of Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental, further south and east, that bore the brunt.

An ethnically mixed area, the Compostela Valley was inhabited by a multitude of tribes until the 20th century, when a logging boom brought waves of migrants from further north in the Philippines.

The timber trade, and later the mining industry, changed the geological and demographic landscape, stripping away the forests and driving many tribes into the hills.

The valley is also known for its rich, fertile plain, where rice, corn, bananas and coconuts are grown.

But on Thursday, the headline of the Philippine Star, a national newspaper, gave it a new, grim title: "Valley of the dead."